Hello fellow members, new to the forum and have found a couple of threads on this but not sure all of the bases have been covered.
I am right handed and of course left eye dominant, I have limited experience shooting and am willing to try anything that can help. I have shot pistols but that’s not too terrible to adjust with the left eye dominance, but as far as AR’s and rifles go I am not too good with targeting but I want to learn iron sights just as much as using an optic since we all know batteries can and will fail. I got some info from usmcvet, thank you, and was hoping to get more input on the matter.
I’ve heard use eye patches, training your right eye and such but not sure on how to do it as I need tips on shooting as well, I feel this might be a chicken/egg dilemma since I might be better off shooting left handed.
Everybody that I know (including myself), that has cross eye dominance, shoot long guns from dominant eye side. My eye domination is so strong that I actually barely can use iron sights with weak eye, even RDS are a problem. Tried training with obscuring dominant eye, but with not real results.
BTW When I was learning shooting in secondary school (defence preparation lessons) they required to shoot from right shoulder, and nobody was giving as damn about hand dominance or eye dominance issues.
I’m hoping that I’ll be able to shoot from my right side and eventually both. But if patching my eye doesn’t work I’ll have to go lefty, that’s part of the reason I bought a Steyr Aug A3 so I have the option of switching the bolt to make it a little more left hand friendly.
I had to deal with this with my wife. She shot pistol fine but when I introduced her to the M4 system she couldn’t use the sights. I put on an eotech just to get her hitting paper and she still wasn’t hitting anything… I told her “just put the little red dot and circle on the center of the target and squeeze! how hard is that!!!” she looked at me in exasperations and said “what fucking dot”!?! then it hit me… so I had her do the little hand trick and confirmed my suspicions… Then I started teaching her all over again but left handed this time.
I went a head and added an ambi safety and mag release to her gun to help her out. That was our solution. She preferred to learn how to shoot lefthanded with a rifle instead of trying to retrain her eyes
I’m the opposite - left hand/right eye. I started shooting rifle and pistol left handed but when I went to shoot skeet I was told to switch. now I shoot all long guns right, pistol left.
I would advise putting your long gun in front of your dominant eye. pistol doesn’t matter…
Train, train, train… I’ve been working on it for a year, but I can now shoot left handed with my left eye, then switch to right handed with my right eye… both eyes open. My teenage son has been able to do it as long as I can remember, even with archery. The biggest problem is that we don’t put enough time into the training. It took thousands of dry fire repetitions to get it down for me, but I’m now about 75% as fast on my “weak side” as I am on my strong side. My goal is 100% ambidextrous.
One my shooting buddies just smears a little vasiline on the dominate side of his shooting glasses. Another uses a small square of scotch tape. You don’t want to completely block your eye just force the weak eye to focus on the target. GH
Okay so you don’t want to completely blind the eye just make it to where you can’t see clearly, that makes sense. I wasn’t sure on how to train the weak eye.
Either way will usually work. I am no optometrist, nor do I have any scientific backing for what worked for me, but through constant practice I was able to train my eyes to switch dominance based on whichever shoulder my rifle was on. I started off by consciously closing the eye I didn’t want to aim with. Eventually I didn’t need to close it as my body immediately switched when I switched side. I might just be a freak, but it worked for me.
Thanks for the tips guys when I go shoot I’m going to try blurring my left eye and see if I can focus on the target. Might be awhile though need to find a safe place to shoot, only public range nearby has a bad reputation, I’ve heard too many stories of people firing while others are changing targets.
When you are first learning to shoot (especially a rifle with as easy a manual of arms as the AR-15), you can go either way on handedness. Think about it. . . if you’ve never picked up a rifle, it’s going to feel “weird” whether you do it right or left handed. Your eye dominance is locked in, there’s no changing it unless you’re going to wear an eye patch every waking hour of the day.
If being able to shoot ambidexterously is important to you, then it can’t hurt to start training that way, but if you’re only concerned with shooting off your strong side, you might as well follow your eye dominance.
Thanks, holding the rifle is more comfortable in my right hand, when aiming down the irons I can see what I’m looking at through the sights but I can also see the front sight offset from my left eye “pushing” my vision.